Page 45 of Poisoned Promise
“Dove.”
“Don’t,” she hisses. “A bounty? Are you kidding me? The fuck did I do to deserve a bounty?”
“It’s complicated,” I say, holding my hands up. “Look, come back with me, okay? Let me take care of you. You’re beaten to hell. Let me just?—.”
“Get off me!” Aaron’s voice rises up from behind me.
“Listen to me—,” Toph snaps. “This isn’t?—!”
“I’m calling Caterina.”
Those three words from Aaron cut through my chest like a knife made of ice.
Slowly turning on the spot, I glance over at Aaron and Toph, who’s on the ground where Aaron’s punch knocked him to.
Toph climbs to his feet while working his jaw back and forth from the pain of the blow, and Aaron stares down at his phone while typing something out.
I react without much thought.
In a blink, the weight of my gun rests against my palm and I lift it, firing off a single shot before anyone else can even take a breath.
The bullet collides with Aaron’s skull and he crumbles to the ground like a paper bag crushed under a rock.
Silence falls. Even the buzzing, chirruping insects fall quiet.
“What the fuck?!” Dove yells, cutting through that silence after what feels like an eternity. “What are you doing?!”
“Listen.” I turn back to her and holster my gun at my hip. “He was about to do something really stupid and I know the look in his eye. Greed. He wanted that money on your head and he was going to get it.”
“Oh my god.” She lifts both her hands to her face. “You’re insane.”
“I’m really not.”
“You are! Do you think adding a body to my trail is what I want?”
Anger ignites hot in my chest. “Are you fucking kidding me? I just saved your life.”
“Savedme?” She turns her wide eyes on me and there’s something about her gaze that unsettles me. It’s like she’s looking at me but not quite seeing me. “You just put a bigger fucking target on my head! What part ofleave me out of this lifedid you not understand?!”
“You called me!” I yell back. “You fucking called me!”
“Because I thought you’d be able to help me get out of this, not add a corpse leading directly to me!”
“No one will trace it to you,” I insist.
“Really?!” Hatred burns in her gorgeous eyes and as she points at me with one long finger and steps away, my stomach somersaults. “Because from the sounds of it, there’s a bounty on my head because of that dead Rossi bastard who is also someone I didn’t kill, so tell me how this death won’t end up on my tail too?”
My eyes widen in disbelief. “I did it to save you, Dove. You’re fucking ungrateful, you know that?”
“Ungrateful! Oh yes. Why don’t you kill Toph while you’re at it? I’m sure that’s another disaster that won’t point a fucking arrow at me!”
“Hey!” Toph protests from where he kneels next to Aaron’s body, his phone in his hand.
“I— sorry Toph,” Dove says, stepping further back from me. “This is insane. I never should have called you.”
“If you didn’t, you’d be dead right now. Look, Dove. You’re not thinking straight. You’ve got a head injury and god knows what else. Let me look at you.”
“No, stay away from me.”
